


With Eyes to Hear

by triggerswaggiehavoc



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Deaf Character, Fluff, Gentleness, M/M, Minor Character Death, Past Character Death, Sirens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 20:50:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14528913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/triggerswaggiehavoc/pseuds/triggerswaggiehavoc
Summary: To hear and to listen are two very different things. Mingyu is learning slowly.





	With Eyes to Hear

Waves crash white and frothy against the island’s cliffs, and Mingyu watches them. Day in and day out, it’s always the same, the same ocean and the same rocks, and he wonders if it’ll ever change. It’s been so long since he’s had a chance to sing. Ships never come by these coasts anymore.

When Mingyu was born, he learned to sing. That was the very first thing they taught him. All the older sirens taught him by example, singing themselves toward the boundless ocean, drawing tiny dots of ships from the horizon until they became full and real just before crashing into the rocky shoreline. He watched the surviving sailors scramble up the beaches as his sisters continued their aching lullabies, tearing themselves up with madness until they left the gray sands stained, until the next rains washed their traces away.

Though they taught him, they never really let him sing when he was younger. Small though they were, they told him, there were risks they didn’t want him to take. Risks like his song being heard and passed by, a serenade survived by even one. “What happens?” he’d asked, but they didn’t tell him.

“When you’re older,” they said, “then we’ll explain.” But the explanation never came.

He still remembers clearly. They’d sung diligently, beautifully, as a ship crept in from the sea’s furthest edge, slowly growing to be beside them. Even as it neared, it showed no signs of turning toward their little island, no matter how strong the voices of his sisters carried over the wind. When it drew past their banks, they could see why: all the crew had their ears plugged, stuffed with cotton and bound tight, oblivious to the charms of the sirens’ song. All but one.

The man was back away from the rest, tied in place with coils of thick rope, and Mingyu can still recall the way his face twisted in its scream, eyes screwed up in agony and jaw locked open. He was already far past madness, but his ship was not with him, sailing calmly by as he strained his neck to look back at the isle of sirens as they passed. Slowly, with the ship’s departure past the opposite skyline, Mingyu’s sisters stopped singing. One by one, after the oceans around them had cleared, after the screams of that one frantic sailor had ceased echoing through the still air surrounding them, his sisters drew themselves to the cliffside and flung themselves into the sea below.

A siren’s purpose is to sing. They are born to do it, born to have their songs heard and felt. For a human to feel that song is the spiraled path to lunacy, the seal of death, the ultimate end; should any human hear it and escape alive, they have not felt. Without feeling, a song is nothing, so the sirens must die. Death kisses each one eternal below the churning boil of water circling the cliffs, and Mingyu sits alone far above on an island all to himself. Still, he has yet to sing.

Mingyu knows he has to sing because he can feel in his chest that he must, because his whole body aches to do it, but he can’t. When there’s no ship in sight, the gaping loneliness of his empty shores makes singing feel so pointless, so empty. When one finally does appear, he opens his mouth, but his lungs freeze up. He blinks, and all he sees is his sisters falling, falling, the rolling tides swallowing them up, and he can’t choke out a note.

As he sits now among the flowering branches of the island’s inner wood, lazy breeze stirring the feathers that climb over his back, he gazes out over the ocean. He wonders, if a ship were to pass by right now, whether he would be able to sing. His throat feels dry from so long without speaking, tongue lead behind his teeth, but he still thinks to himself that he might sing if he had the chance. If only. Another few moments crawl by, another few breaths, and then he sees it.

A ship.

It draws its way in slowly, like a drop of water rolling across a rock not quite flat enough to hold it. Mingyu watches its small white sail fill with wind and creeps closer to the cliff’s edge to keep his eyes on it. Though it is far off, he can just make out a lone crew member on its deck, manning the ship’s wheel with a steadfast gaze over the sea stretching all around him. Surely there is more than one man on that ship, Mingyu thinks, floating across that lonely blue expanse, though if he does have companions they don’t make themselves known.

Mingyu parts his lips, but no note escapes before his chest grows too tight to breathe. Relax, he tells himself. The man’s ears aren’t covered, nor is he restrained. He’s manning the wheel. Even if there are other crew members, even if they’ve covered their ears, they can do nothing. They will not escape the crash against the rocks or the wreckage of their vessel. But what if, Mingyu wonders anyway. He chokes down that wonder and opens his mouth again, wider. Softly, gently, he begins to sing.

At first, it’s very strange. Mingyu is used to the feel of singing the way his body tells him he should be, was born to be, but his ears aren’t used to the sound of his voice. It starts off uncertain and unpracticed, but after a short while, he naturally finds the tune. Once the melody starts pouring from him more easily, he puffs his chest out and stands taller on the precipice, projects each note louder. It would be much easier with his sisters still around, but he tries to make up for their volume as best he can. It would be easier to make up for their volume if he were more practiced.

For a long while, nothing changes. The boat approaches gradually, growing from the size of a small stone to a shell to a tree fruit, and when it’s close enough, Mingyu can make out the face of the man at the wheel. He looks tired, drained, eyes glazed as they scan the horizon around him. Mingyu stands taller and raises his volume again, though the strain hurts his throat, and then he sees the man turn to look toward him, eyes crawling all the way up the cliff face to find Mingyu. Impossible though it is at the distance, he looks Mingyu dead in the eyes, mouth falling open in quiet wonder. Then he turns his head away and changes the direction of the boat.

It does not curve away from the island, rather to the side of it, and Mingyu follows with his eyes until it has rounded out of his sight before following its trail on foot. The ship is moving slowly enough that he catches up to it before long, and when he does, it’s close enough by the island that he can make out more details. All while he follows, he doesn’t stop singing, vocal cords taut against each note, but the ship continues on its winding path, closer and closer but never quite touching. Perhaps he still isn’t loud enough, or the wind is smothering his song; though if he isn’t being heard, why does the ship come anyway?

Mingyu follows along the coast, high up where he watches, waiting for the ship’s hull to scrape against the rocky shores of his home but it doesn’t. Instead, he sees the craft slow to a still by the gentlest stretch of gray sand, sees a small anchor heaved over a little crank and lowered into the depths of the water. Three more times, the process is repeated, and then Mingyu watches the boat’s sole occupant unfurl a rope ladder over the edge and climb down a few steps before dropping into the water and swimming ashore.

While Mingyu runs down toward where his visitor is arriving, he continues to sing. He doesn’t quite understand, but maybe that man has fallen to madness after all, will tear himself to pieces at the sight of Mingyu up close, at the clearer tone of his voice. Step by step, Mingyu weaves his way to the shore, down the steep slopes of unvegetated rock, until he is at the same stretch of sand where the boat came to rest.

As he arrives, his guest is making shore, treading on rough sand as his soaked clothes hang around his shoulders. His skin glistens in the glow of the sun, eyes taking careful survey of his landing place without a trace of madness, and Mingyu notices that he’s stopped singing, though he doesn’t remember when. A gnarled cluster of trees keeps him tucked in a patch of shade while he eyes the stranger in his home, but when the man’s feet come to a halt in the sand and he swivels in search of something he can’t see, Mingyu steps out of the dark.

Curiosity more than anything pushes him to keep taking steps toward the man, a boundless curiosity that eats at him from the ears. After ten steps, the foreigner looks at him finally, and his lips curl in a strange way that makes Mingyu still in his tracks. Then the visitor walks toward him, slow but sure, until he stops just a few feet away. Mingyu watches his eyes as they find the feathers on his body and where they fade to skin, trace the harsh angles of Mingyu’s face in wordless wonder. For a long time, they only stare at each other.

Mingyu has never seen a human this close before. Even when he was young, the closest he ever came to them was his perch at the top of the cliffs, watching them scramble to death from the wrecked ships. They are so soft, so weak-looking, nothing to protect them from the harsh world in which they’re enveloped. This particular one has shining eyes that glitter in the light and look all over with abandon, small hands that squeeze gently at the sopping clothes stuck to his body. In so many ways, this human is like him, and in so many more ways, not. After a moment, the human lifts his arms and starts moving them about, measured motions that seem to mean something but carry no weight to Mingyu.

“Why are you alive?” Mingyu asks him. “How did you survive?” His voice is hoarse from singing, lower and more hushed than he thought it would be. It’s been so long since he’s spoken at all, and the lack of practice shows in the uncertainty of how his tongue carries each word. Alone on this island for this much time, he’s never had any need to speak.

Instead of answering, the man’s eyes widen to small saucers, and he shakes his head back and forth with vigor. With one doughy hand, he points to his ear and continues to shake his head, wet hair flinging droplets onto Mingyu’s bare chest.

“What are you doing?” Mingyu steps closer and leans down to inspect his ears. They’re small, pink around the shell, and Mingyu wonders if perhaps humans with small ears don’t hear as well. “Your ears are too small?” The man continues to shake his head, begins to make shapes with his hands again, but all Mingyu does is glare at him. “Explain yourself.”

Still shaking his head, the man takes a firm breath in and opens his mouth. “Can’t,” he says. His jaw tenses with the strain of forcing it out, and his voice is even hoarser than Mingyu’s, barely understandable, like he’s never used it before and isn’t sure how. Ceasing his motion, he points once more at his ear and repeats gruffly, “Can’t.”

“You can’t hear?” Mingyu asks, and after a moment’s beat, the man nods at him with a wide smile. “Why not?” Maybe it has something to do with his small ears. Mingyu tries to grab at one to inspect it, but the human recoils at the feeling of his clawed finger and starts to shake his head again.

“Are you alone?” Mingyu decides to ask. When his guest only stares at him blankly, he repeats himself, much slower, and gets a heavy nod in return. Somewhere inside his chest, he feels a deep sting. That loneliness is not unfamiliar.

Brightening, the man grabs a pointed stone from the ground by his feet and begins carving into the hard tracks of sand. With the tip, he details curling symbols among the grains, and Mingyu is sure they must mean something, though he doesn’t know what it is. When he’s finished writing, the visitor rises to full height and pats himself firm on the chest. Faced with Mingyu’s empty gaze, he points back to the ground and back to himself, over again a few times, face decorated with a proud grin. Now Mingyu shakes his head.

“I don’t understand,” he says. The man frowns.

Putting one hand against his throat, he carefully parts his lips. “Soonyoung,” he says, more confidently than before, though still in that uneven voice, eyebrows furrowed. With his free hand, he points back at the ground and pats his chest again. Mingyu’s mind starts to draw the dots together.

“Your name is Soonyoung?” he asks, careful to spend time on each word. He doesn’t like the sound of his voice grating on the air for so long, but Soonyoung watches his lips and nods with full enthusiasm. “My name is Mingyu.”

Soonyoung mouths the name a few times in imitation of Mingyu’s lips, then squats to carve more symbols into the sand. He smooths out the sand beside his own name and draws them carefully, making sure the lines are even and balanced. When he finishes he lifts his chin to look up at Mingyu and points at him. Mingyu guesses these symbols are supposed to be his own name, though they’re hard to distinguish from those that make up Soonyoung’s. He crouches to take a closer look, and as he does, Soonyoung holds up one hand and starts making it into strange shapes, staring hard into Mingyu’s eyes.

“What?” Mingyu asks.

Dropping the rock, Soonyoung points to the ground with one hand and forms the shapes again with the other. Mingyu gets the feeling Soonyoung wants him to copy the hand movements, but all he does is watch Soonyoung repeat them, again and again. He points to one of the symbols and folds his hand up resolutely, stare thick on Mingyu until he succumbs and mimics the same position with his own hand. Smiling, Soonyoung reaches to Mingyu’s hand and corrects it.

He has never been touched by a human, and he doesn’t expect it to be so soft. Even through a glove of callouses, Soonyoung’s fingertips are gentle and feathery where they rearrange Mingyu’s fingers into the proper orientation. Human hands are so different from siren hands, so vulnerable and small, and Soonyoung’s look so powerless beside Mingyu’s. Touch retreating, Soonyoung points to the next symbol and rearranges his hand, waits on Mingyu to do the same. His eyes glitter while he demonstrates, and Mingyu’s chest aches terribly.

 

Soonyoung stays, though Mingyu doesn’t know why. Each day, Mingyu finds his ship still docked in the waters by the shore, bobbing against the change of tides. The island is too small for Soonyoung to evade him on it, and he is always somewhere different, running through the muck of trees and shaking their flowers off in search of fruit or crawling into damp caves with no light to guide him. He always grins when Mingyu finds him, makes more of those strange motions with his hands. Gradually, Mingyu is beginning to understand them.

_Do you live here alone?_ Soonyoung signals to him one day, and Mingyu pauses and nods only after freezing in surprise that he’s understood the question. By now, Soonyoung has been here for so many days Mingyu has stopped counting them. He often wonders whether Soonyoung was going anywhere to begin with all that time ago, wonders if he still plans on making it there someday.

_For how long?_ Soonyoung asks next.

“A long time,” Mingyu tells him. Reading lips is difficult, Soonyoung has told him, but if Mingyu says something slowly enough, repeats it enough times, he can usually get it. Soonyoung’s gaze on Mingyu’s lips always makes him feel unbalanced, but eventually, he meets Mingyu’s eyes again.

_Why?_

_My sisters_ , Mingyu signs back because he knows it, but he isn’t sure how to continue. Not only for lack of vocabulary.

Looking at Soonyoung now, he is so fragile. Looking at him, Mingyu remembers that he was supposed to die, would have had his bones taken by the waves already if only he could hear. Does Soonyoung even realize? If he does, he doesn’t seem scared. Maybe because he knows Mingyu can’t hurt him as long as he can’t be heard. Something about thinking he might not realize makes Mingyu feel vile, like his organs are rotting inside him.

_Why did they leave?_

Mingyu chews at his lip a while before trying to answer. If he says they died, he’s certain Soonyoung would be sad. He’s never seen it, but he knows he wouldn’t like the look. Soonyoung shouldn’t be sad over it either, Mingyu knows, because his sisters would not have felt the same sadness to see him perish, but still Mingyu knows he would be. When Mingyu takes too long to craft an answer, Soonyoung touches his shoulder, only for a moment. It’s painful in a way that makes Mingyu’s throat close.

_It’s lonely, right?_

Mouth dry, Mingyu stares at Soonyoung. How unfair to say something like that. Isn’t Soonyoung lonelier? A sole man all by himself, crossing the endless blues of the ocean with no one as company. Mingyu at least has his island to call home, unchanging around him, but Soonyoung only has his small ship and its small anchors, borne continually into new leagues of the same endless scene. For the first time, Mingyu really considers how terribly lonely he must have been, wonders if he still is.

He gestures a hand toward Soonyoung’s chest to say, _Aren’t you lonely, too?_ Soonyoung turns to face the sky, eyes catching blue through the web of branches above them. In the distance, his boat rocks atop the waves, barely stirring enough to spot. A muted smile creeps to Soonyoung’s lips, and gradually, he starts to laugh.

When Soonyoung laughs, his voice is loud and choppy, whistling through his lungs. Mingyu thinks it is a beautiful sound, far more beautiful than any melody his sisters ever sang, and he wishes Soonyoung could hear it somehow, wishes there were anyone else around to hear it and understand the way he’s feeling. As Soonyoung’s whole frame shakes with mirth, Mingyu thinks that he is enchanting. Slowly, unintentionally, he signs, _Beautiful_. Soonyoung’s laughter peters out until the only sound is the low hush of the wind brushing through the trees around them, and when he looks into Mingyu’s eyes, the island feels too crowded.

_On the boat, I was lonely_ , Soonyoung tells him. _I’m happy I stopped here_.

Mingyu is happy he stopped here, too. He is happy he’s felt the soft pads of Soonyoung’s fingers, heard the charming ring of Soonyoung’s laugh. He’s glad for the company of the single boat that bobs its life away humbly each day, a tiny home beside his own. Even if it’s started to make him think he’ll never sing again, when he knows he was born to.

More and more lately, he’s been wondering whether it means anything for him to keep living this way. His sisters died because their song was passed by without being felt, and though he hasn’t been passed by, his song was not felt. If Soonyoung leaves, will he die as well? The thought makes it seem like a waiting game, shadow crawling slowly across the ground until it stretches far into night’s blackness, when Soonyoung leaves him behind to go where he was aiming. Mingyu doesn’t want to believe. Even if he’ll live on, Mingyu wants him to stay.

_Mingyu_. Soonyoung signs each letter, slow and deliberate, careful as he leans in. _What were you doing when you saw me? I wanted to ask_.

A shy pink dusts Mingyu’s cheeks, though he can’t trace why. _Singing_ , he explains. Soonyoung’s eyes widen, mouth dropping open in awe.

_Really?_

“I was born to sing,” Mingyu says aloud, and Soonyoung’s gaze on his lips is steady. His eyes widen once he understands, flush with stars. He looks Mingyu over, at his feathered body and clawed hands, and for a moment, Mingyu is scared he’ll realize how different they are and want to leave. Soonyoung only breathes, even and measured, right in time with the subtle swaying of his ship so far in the distance.

_Will you sing now?_

“But you can’t hear me.”

Smiling, Soonyoung shakes his head, then places his palms on either side of Mingyu’s neck. His touch is light but insistent, warm all around, and Mingyu has never felt the way his body right now is telling him to. He feels sick, weak, a breath from fainting, but steady and whole in the same stroke, held in place by Soonyoung’s presence. Soonyoung grins at him, eyes twinkling to small crescents, and nods once.

Mingyu begins on unsteady notes, voice shaking with nerves. He doesn’t know how loud he should sing for an audience that can’t hear, doesn’t know how the song will feel on Soonyoung’s palms, but Soonyoung closes his eyes and nods again, so Mingyu doesn’t stop. The song builds naturally, all on its own, until he’s singing so loudly the gulls perched on the mast of Soonyoung’s ship stir in wonder.

It is a very strange thing to be touched on the neck when singing, completely different from the way Mingyu sang the first time. His voice sounds nearly the same, just barely smoother, but it lives in him in so many other ways, bleeding into the air from his skin and his hair, flowing clean into Soonyoung. He watches Soonyoung’s face and its calmness, the subtle curl of his lips as the melody echoes in his silent hands, and Mingyu thinks that this is so different from having his song heard, thinks it is not different at all.

Those many years ago, his sisters had their song heard without being felt, and now Mingyu is having his own felt without being heard. Even so, he doesn’t feel like he’s not being heard. In front of him, Soonyoung is still, arms unbending, eyelids closed as his hair rustles in the breeze, and Mingyu thinks there can be no way for Soonyoung to leave that ends in death’s wet kiss. There is no prospect that he has not felt Mingyu’s song now, even though he has survived its hollow croonings. This is the song Mingyu was born to sing.

The final note buzzes in the warm skin of Mingyu’s neck long after it has stopped ringing in the air, and Soonyoung leaves his hands still a while, eyes closed, heartbeat humming barely through his palms. He opens his eyes and reclaims his hands, teeth gleaming in a smile.

“Beautiful,” he says, and he signs the word at the same time, hand curling around his face. His eyes shine with wetness, like he might cry, and Mingyu realizes only then that a tear decorates his own cheek, lazy salt trail dragging behind it. Soonyoung brushes feathery fingertips over his cheek before he signs, _I am not lonely now_.

_I am not lonely_ , Mingyu signs back to him, and his lips smile in time with Soonyoung’s, measured but certain. Far away from them, Soonyoung’s boat still lies in wait, and Mingyu thinks it may rot there. Soonyoung lowers a hand back to his neck with just a hint of hesitance, and now more than ever, he blends in with the island, colored the same as the trees and the sand, one with the sun and the water.

_Will you sing one more time?_ he asks, and Mingyu nods.

He eases gently into his song, and as the melody rises within him, he forgets. The jagged cliffs caging his home here, the sight of his sisters falling from them, the look of madness in sailors’ eyes as they clamored to the shore. All of it washes from him, all but the look of Soonyoung’s smile and the feel of his hands, warm and forever. This, Mingyu thinks, is how song is felt. This is how it was always meant to be felt.

In the great distance, a wave rocks a forgotten boat.

**Author's Note:**

> hello!!! thanks so much for reading!! i've had it finished for a while now already, but here is my submission for the spring garden fic fest for soongyu!! this fic is based on the prompt "siren mingyu and deaf pirate soonyoung", and while i didn't quite make him a pirate, i hope you (and the person who originally submitted the prompt, if they're reading) will enjoy it anyway. i've never written a deaf character before, so i tried to be delicate in my handling of soonyoung in this, and i hope i did an alright job. i also had a nice time writing this, so i really really hope you were able to have an equally nice time reading!! i missed soongyu... anyway, happy spring garden day! please please please go check out all the other fics in the collection, which i'm sure will be fantastic! thanks again so much for reading!


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